The Athletic has live coverage of Seahawks vs. Patriots in Super Bowl 60.
SAN FRANCISCO — To some, it’s a holy day, if not an actual holiday.
When the NFL decides its champion Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, tens of millions will commemorate the annual occasion by ingesting calories, purchasing squares and obsessing over Bad Bunny’s song choices. If you’re not at a Super Bowl party, or hosting one, you’re probably experiencing a severe case of FOMO.
As usual, the Super Bowl will be the year’s most-watched event on American screens, an inevitability that has prompted calls for the creation of a national holiday wedged between MLK Jr. Day and Presidents Day.
Yet for all the pageantry, not everyone is looking forward to this hyped-up clash between the NFC champion Seattle Seahawks and AFC champion New England Patriots.
For some, it will be a not-so-Super Sunday.
That’s especially true for this list of salty observers, all of whom have their reasons.
Call it the Unlucky XIII.
We’ll work backward, from highly annoyed to legitimately nauseous:
13. Jerod Mayo
A year ago, a lot of people thought Mayo got a raw deal. Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who had anointed him as Bill Belichick’s successor a year before Mayo actually became the team’s head coach, fired him after a single season, despite a glaringly deficient roster. The move was viewed as less of an injustice after another ex-Pats linebacker, Mike Vrabel, succeeded his former teammate and led a team that had gone 4-13 in 2024 to a 14-3 record and an AFC championship. For Mayo, that’s got to hurt. Even worse, he probably has to spend Super Sunday rooting for the Pats: Mayo’s brother, Deron, was kept on by Vrabel as the team’s strength and conditioning coach. Stay strong, Jerod.
12. Jimmy and Dee Haslam
Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has a new head coach, but one that got away is now coaching in the Super Bowl. (Nick Cammett / Getty Images)
The Cleveland Browns’ owners had Vrabel in the building in 2024, as a coaching and personnel consultant. By all accounts, they were struck by his leadership skills and wisdom. Yet following a 3-14 season, the Haslams decided to stick with coach Kevin Stefanski, and Vrabel instantly became the NFL’s hottest head-coaching candidate, landing in New England. Oops. After Stefanski went 5-12 in 2025, the Haslams fired him, then conducted a prolonged search for a replacement. Enter Todd Monken, who had a choppy stint as the team’s offensive coordinator in 2019, and whose hiring has already led to the departure of the existing coaching staff’s true star, defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz. Oh, and it looks like Deshaun Watson could be the presumptive starting quarterback in 2026. Nice work. Enjoy the big game.
11. Tom Brady
It’s not that Super Bowl LX is a bummer for Brady, the starting quarterback for each of the Pats’ six championships, because he might have to watch another New England QB, Drake Maye, hoist a Lombardi Trophy. Remember, Brady has nothing to prove: He won a Super Bowl for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers immediately after leaving the Patriots. Rather, this is about what Brady, as a neophyte minority owner for the Las Vegas Raiders with considerable decision-making juice, misread a year ago amid coaching and quarterback searches.
After losing out on his top coaching target, Ben Johnson, Brady settled for then-73-year-old Pete Carroll, an odd choice for a rebuilding team. And after missing out on his top QB target, Matthew Stafford — despite a timely rendezvous on the ski slopes — Brady decided against pursuing free agent Sam Darnold, instead trading a third-round pick to the Seahawks for Geno Smith (and paying Smith more than the Seahawks would ultimately pay Darnold).
It gets more surreal: Seattle’s pivot to Darnold occurred partly because of the recommendation of newly hired offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak who, after Carroll’s one-and-done stint in Vegas, is in line to be the Raiders’ next head coach. Brady and Kubiak will have to figure out whether to take a quarterback with the No. 1 pick of the 2026 draft. There’s a lot of work to be done. For Brady, Super Sunday can’t pass quickly enough.
10. Offset
Rapper Offset, seen at a Christmas charity event in December, has been taunted by New England Patriots fans. (Paras Griffin / Getty Images)
Despite the pejorative chants of some Patriots fans following New England’s AFC Championship Game victory over the Denver Broncos, I mean no disrespect to the esteemed artist, who shares three children with another talented rapper, Cardi B. Yet it will be understandable if Offset is set off by the sight of Patriots receiver Stefon Diggs — Cardi B’s current love interest, and the father of her three-month-old son — catching passes from Drake Maye. If Offset roots for the Seahawks to “Run It Up,” can you blame him?
9. A.J. Brown
By late October, it was clear that Brown was fed up with the Eagles and quarterback Jalen Hurts. Philly was underutilizing its star receiver, and the trade deadline loomed. It stands to reason that Brown turned his gaze northward toward Foxboro where Vrabel, his former coach in Tennessee, was presiding over a Patriots turnaround, and Maye, the team’s exceptionally accurate second-year quarterback, was becoming a star. Brown and Diggs on opposite sides of the line of scrimmage? It could have been amazing. For Brown, a year after experiencing a championship, this Super Bowl may be hard to watch. Maybe he’ll read a book instead.
8. Jed York
For an entire week preceding the game, the San Francisco 49ers’ owner has to smile and gladhand and act like a gracious host, all as the Niners’ NFC West rivals bask in the glow of a conference championship, while staying close enough to the 49ers’ training facility to feel the surrounding electromagnetic waves. Then, on Super Sunday, York may have to watch the Seahawks accomplish what his team couldn’t two years earlier against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII (San Francisco led on three separate occasions in the fourth quarter and overtime before succumbing in heartbreaking fashion).
Despite a rash of injuries to key players, the 49ers appeared to be having a dream season in 2025 that could have climaxed with them playing for a Lombardi Trophy in their own stadium. The dream died in Seattle last month, in ugly fashion: a 41-6 divisional-round playoff defeat to the Seahawks. Sorry, Jed, but take heart — if your team can rebound to win the NFC next season, Super Bowl XLI will take place at SoFi Stadium, allowing the 49ers to spend a week rubbing it in the faces of fans of the rival Los Angeles Rams, and ex-Niners coach Jim Harbaugh to boot.
7. The Frustrated Four
Picture a quartet of quarterbacks walking — well, in a couple of cases, hobbling — down a pristine beach, only to encounter an ocean-facing bar. Sand in their toes, Coronas in their hands, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes stare up at a television screen, wondering how it all came to pass. How did Maye, in his second season, end up representing the AFC in the Ultimate Game, in a conference brimming with elite passers? If you’re Allen, the only member of this star-studded group even to make it to this postseason, it’s enough to make you want to cry. Wait — there’s a jukebox in the corner? Is that an old Kris Kristofferson tune we hear? Sing with us: Blame it on Mahomes …
6. Sean McVay
Sean McVay still hasn’t gotten over a loss to Mike Macdonald’s Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Two weeks ago, the Rams’ coach missed out on a third Super Bowl appearance, thanks partly to the heroics of Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp. The Rams had given up on the Super Bowl LVI MVP following the 2024 season, and after he scored Seattle’s final points in the NFC Championship game, I reported that Kupp’s exit from the organization had been a bitter one. Included in the fallout was a quote from another ex-Rams player, middle linebacker Ernest Jones IV, who earned second-team All-Pro honors for the Seahawks and said of Kupp: “They were done with him. (They said), ‘He’s not worth it.’ They said that about a lot of us.” Ouch. Will McVay spend Super Sunday rooting for the Patriots, the franchise that defeated him (and held his offense to a field goal) in Super Bowl LIII? Or will he turn off the TV and start planning a ski trip to Montana with Stafford?
5. DK Metcalf
Last March the standout wide receiver requested a trade, reportedly indicating to Seahawks management that he preferred to be dealt to a contending team. Seattle general manager John Schneider complied, shipping Metcalf to the Pittsburgh Steelers, where the wideout formed an instant bond with soon-to-be signed quarterback Aaron Rodgers. It didn’t go the way Metcalf envisioned: He had a quiet 59 receptions for 850 yards in 2025, and after an altercation with a fan during the Steelers’ Dec. 21 road victory over the Detroit Lions, he was suspended for the final two games, nearly costing Pittsburgh its season. A missed Baltimore Ravens field goal allowed the Steelers to sneak into the postseason, but Metcalf (two catches, 42 yards) and his teammates were swallowed up by the visiting Houston Texans in a first-round blowout.
Meanwhile, with Metcalf gone, Jaxon Smith-Njigba emerged as the Offensive Player of the Year, with a league-best 1,793 receiving yards; former Saints speedster Rashid Shaheed became one of the NFL’s most impactful midseason trade acquisitions; and Kupp’s clutch heroics against the Rams helped Seattle reach the Super Bowl for the first time in 11 years. Look away, DK.
4. Bill Belichick
Watching Brady win a Super Bowl the year after breaking up their vaunted partnership was hard enough for Belichick. Now, on Super Sunday, he’ll have to confront the prospect of his former boss, owner Robert Kraft, capturing a Lombardi without him. The disconnect between the two men has been well-documented, with Belichick, now North Carolina’s coach, banning Patriots scouts from Tar Heels practices. The potential sight of confetti falling on Kraft, two years after Belichick’s departure, is enough to make the coach’s stomach turn. And that’s not even the worst part. During the Super Bowl, the newly elected Pro Football Hall of Famers — announced three nights earlier — are introduced on the field. Ridiculously, the only six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach will not be among them.
3. Pete Carroll
Pete Carroll and the Raiders started the 2025 season by beating Mike Vrabel’s Patriots. (Adam Glanzman / Getty Images)
Five months ago, Carroll began the 2025 season by beating the Patriots at Gillette Stadium, then dancing in the visitors’ locker room. “This ain’t the only time we’re gonna get one of these,” the coach assured his Raiders players. Shortly thereafter, Smith, the quarterback who’d previously played for Carroll in Seattle, intoned, “This is one win; we’re here for more than one win!” before presenting the coach with a game ball. Neither man was wrong. The Raiders won twice more, finishing with a league worst 3-14 record that resulted in Carroll’s dismissal by owner Mark Davis.
Now, Carroll must watch two other billionaires who fired him — Kraft (in 2000) and Seahawks chair Jody Allen (in 2024, after a highly successful 14-year run) — compete for the right to hoist a Lombardi. It doesn’t help that leading into the game, if he isn’t careful, Carroll will have watched about 10,000 replays of his least-favorite play ever, Malcolm Butler’s game-winning interception for the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX. For Pete’s sake, let’s hope he experiences an extended power outage.
2. Amy Adams Strunk
The woman who fired Vrabel two years ago is having a rough, rough 2025 season, and Super Bowl LX could be the cherry on top of a hot-sludge sundae. In addition to perpetuating a seemingly endless cycle of intermittent firings and lack of alignment between coaches and the front office, the Tennessee Titans’ owner endured many conspicuous indignities over the past several months.
In September the team’s struggling rookie quarterback, No. 1 overall pick Cam Ward, gave a memorable five-letter description of her team: “We ass.” In October, six days before facing Vrabel’s Patriots in Nashville, Adams Strunk fired second-year coach Brian Callahan, skipping the subsequent press conference. That Sunday, as the final seconds of New England’s 31-13 victory over Tennessee ticked away, some fans at Nissan Stadium — in homage to the 2021 NFL Coach of the Year — chanted Vrabel’s name. Three nights before Super Sunday, Vrabel captured that award for a second time. The Titans, who went 3-14 in 2025, are praying that newly hired Robert Saleh can coax them back to respectability. Smooth move, Amy.
1. Kevin O’Connell
In February of 2025, in the wake of Darnold’s breakout season for the Minnesota Vikings, O’Connell told reporters that the talented quarterback had “earned the right to be a free agent.” It seemed a noble gesture from the head coach, given that the Vikings could have kept Darnold by applying the franchise tag, but O’Connell, a renowned quarterback whisperer, didn’t hesitate to help Darnold relocate, saying glowing things about him to Schneider as free agency approached. O’Connell, after all, had a plan.
However, when free agent Daniel Jones chose the Indianapolis Colts over the Vikings and O’Connell ultimately elected to rebuff the interest of Rodgers, a four-time MVP, the Vikings were poised to ride-or-die with J.J. McCarthy, their 2024 first-round draft pick. Other than a stirring comeback victory in the “Monday Night Football” opener, there wasn’t a whole lot of riding. Conversely, Darnold helped bring the Seahawks’ Super Bowl dreams to life; so much for that stigma that he shrinks on the big stage.
The Vikings fired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah last week, and the stage is set for even more upheaval in Minnesota: After finishing third in the NFC North, the Vikings, at the very least, will bring in competition for McCarthy in 2026. In the meantime, on Super Sunday, O’Connell will surely ponder what might have been — no matter which team has the ball. That’s because, before taking McCarthy with the 10th pick in the spring of 2024, the Vikings tried hard to trade up for Maye, who went third overall to New England. If O’Connell, depending upon his appetite for masochism, does decide to watch the game, he may end up rooting for interceptions. Hopefully, he’ll enjoy Bad Bunny’s song choices more than his recent quarterback-related decisions.